The making of a damascus Sgian Dubh (picture heavy)

[jmercier]

So, unhappy with the chincy yet expensive sgian dubh for sale everywhere, and being a hobby blacksmith already, I decided to make my own sgian dubh.
I tried to document many of the steps with photos, though I really didnt get any 'while working on it' photos, just the intermediary steps between. Some of the photos are rather large, those ones, to preserve formatting of the thread, I'm just linking to rather than inserting.

I'm brand new to these forums, so pardon me if I'm breaking some un-written rule by posting so many images in a thread, I know the board limits me to 10 so some are linked for that reason other than size. I'll edit this to be all links if needed after.

Wanting what I carry on myself to be something a bit special, I opted to forge my blade from a piece of crane cable.



To see how it forge welds together, here's a picture of a different piece of cable with the end welded together

http://www.tharkis.com/images/cable.jpg

Once it was forge welded together, I drew it out into a lengthy and sizeable billet

Sorry for the poor quality of this picture
http://www.tharkis.com/images/sgiandubh02.jpg

There was much more material than I thought there would be, so I drew out the billet in the center and forged it down into two billets, with a stick tang, then I surface ground all the fire scale off the faces, and leveled them flat.



Next I took my billet, ground off the bad part at the end where the weld didnt fully take, and marked out how i wanted the blade to look, the arrow is pointing to the spine of the blade

http://www.tharkis.com/images/sgiandubh04.jpg

I didnt want to forge the billet any further at this point because i didnt want to distort the cable pattern in the blade too much more, and would rather cut across the pattern so it shows up clearly. I cut out the profile of the blade on my bandsaw, and then began to grind the bevels in the blade.

http://www.tharkis.com/images/sgiandubh05.jpg

Once I had the bevels ground into the blade leaving the edge just about a dime's width, I filed in the traditional Scotish scalloping on the spine of the sgian dubh



Next, with the filework done, and the belvels ground, I took the blade, and brought it up to non magnetitc, then let it air cool 3 times, to normalize the blade and relieve stress. With that done, I brought it up to critical temp one more time and then quickly quenched it in canola oil. Unfortunately, the blade did not fully harden with the oil quench, so I normalized it again, and this time quenched it direcly in water. There was a slight warpage in the end of the blade after the water quench, but it looked minor enough after hitting it with a hammer a few times while the blade was still at a black heat, that I decided to see if I could sand the warpage out later. The water quench did the trick and the blade was hardened, my file skating off the surface instead of biting.

This image is of the blade right out of the water quench, the fire scale having been blown right off the blade from the quench
http://www.tharkis.com/images/sgiandubh07.jpg

I then immediatly went into my special tempering oven (a toaster oven i bought for 15 bucks at walmart with a firebrick to normalize the temperature as the elements cycle, and a thermometer inside) There I tempered the blade at ~450 for an hour 3 times.

http://www.tharkis.com/images/sgiandubh08.jpg

Once the blade was tempered, I took it out and stuck it on a flat piece of sandpaper on a glass table and rubbed it to see how bad the warp was. In this picture you can see in the reflection of the light how the tip of the blade was still curved back a little bit.



40ish hours of hand sanding later to get rid of the warp and to take the finish up to 600 grit, I was ready to etch the blade. I used a mixture of 50% distilled white vinegar (5% acid) and 50% FeCl for 30 minutes, then I removed it and neutralized it.



With the blade etched, I then buffed the blade vigerously with #000 steel wool to leave a nice finish on the blade that allows you to see the pattern



I then proceded to destroy a lot of rosewood getting a section ready with a slot through the center that was the right size for the tang.

Another poor quality picture
http://www.tharkis.com/images/sgiandubh12.jpg

Once I had a spacer ready with the slot fitting snug, but not so snug that it ended up splitting the wood, I was ready to epoxy the handle on. The bone is from a deer, or so the person who gave it to me assured me.



For epoxy I used a very slow cure JB weld epoxy, I left this like this in a clamp overnight to cure.



Once the epoxy was dry, I took it to my belt sander and sanded down the spacer material to meet flush with the bone. I took it down to a 320 grit belt, then finished up with 400 grit by hand, and then #00 steel wool to polish the bone back to a shine. Finally I was done ! This was my first finished knife (ie, that I put a handle on) and only my 2nd forged blade, so it was a great learning experience, and I certainly plan on making manymore.

This is the "front" side of the sgian dubh, as will be seen facing out from the leg when worn in a sock


And this is the backside



Lastly here is a large copy of the first image

http://www.tharkis.com/sgiandubhlarge.jpg


Thank you for looking !

-Justin

[BEEDEE]

Justin - just what I needed to get me off my butt and start forging blades. Great work, especially like the use of the bone for the handle, makes this a unique piece.

Brian

[pdcorlis]

I'm speechless... WW

[ChromeScholar]

Very exceptional!

[jmercier]

The last link in that post should be

http://www.tharkis.com/images/sgiandubhlarge.jpg

Sorry for the broken link. I tried to edit my post but the forum just hangs when I hit submit to modify the post

[acstoon]

Abso-freaking-awesome!

[Alan H]

WHOAH. Just **WHOAH**.... I am blown away by the amount of work and the skill involved in this.

THAT is a unique blade. I've never seen one like it. Ruddy incredible and GOOD ON YA.

[Splash_4]

Very sweet. It is always good to have another craftsman on the board!

[jmercier]

My appologies, my relies which the forum had eaten all appeared at once.

[Livingston]

VERY sharp [no pun intended]